Explain the Importance of Evaluating Learning Activities Essay. Explain the Importance of Evaluating Learning Activities. The reasons why it is important to evaluate learning activities are: • To see what is working and what needs removing or changing • To assess how the activities are being delivered and how they could be improved • To. The science Conversational presenting. Product Business.
Faculty who take teaching seriously will inevitably ask themselves one especially important question: “How can I become a more effective teacher?” The question implies that an individual’s teaching, no matter how good it may be, can become better. Its answers can lead to improved teaching practices and student learning. Faculty may have been “perfect” in the classroom yesterday, but it is almost impossible to string together a week of such days, let alone an entire semester’s worth.
Pondering this question is the first step on the road to helping one’s students learn more effectively. The second step is to seek answers, which often leads faculty to explore two effective teaching strategies: reading the teaching literature and seriously evaluating their teaching. A review of this literature is beyond the scope of this article, although good starting points include McKeachie (2002) and Perlman, McCann, and McFadden (1999, 2004), and the journal Teaching of Psychology.
Instead, we focus on different strategies for evaluating teaching. Why Evaluate Teaching? The evaluation of teaching has two purposes. The first, called formative evaluation, is aimed squarely at improving teaching. It centers on two questions:. “Am I an effective teacher?”. “How can I become a more effective teacher?” Formative evaluation emphasizes personal reflection and growth, and finding new and better ways to convey information to students, helping them to appreciate the subject matter, and empowering them to become self-learners.
The second purpose emphasizes accountability and addresses two questions:. Am I a good teacher relative to my peers?. Is my teaching an aid or hindrance to tenure, promotion, and merit salary? This type of evaluation, called summative evaluation, entails processes that often make faculty uncomfortable — after all, professional status and money are on the line. Interestingly, both types of evaluation entail many of the same assessment processes. Indeed, if teachers focused primarily on becoming better teachers through formative evaluation, they would have little concern about the outcome of summative evaluation. For this reason, we emphasize formative evaluation.
![Importance Of Evaluating Learning Activities Importance Of Evaluating Learning Activities](/uploads/1/2/5/4/125429890/588748278.png)
What Is To Be Evaluated? When teachers consider teaching and its evaluation, they generally think about what they do in the classroom: the clarity of lectures, the extent to which they engage students in discussion, and so on, but teaching involves more than classroom performance. Faculty prepare for hours in advance of class, create and grade tests, and meet students during office hours, to name but a few teaching activities. Students should learn something about our subject matter because of what faculty do outside of class, and the outcome of this process also is relevant for evaluation. Thus, a broader perspective on teaching encompasses four dimensions: course organization and preparation, classroom performance, approachability and availability, and assessment of student learning. Course Organization and Preparation In evaluating teaching, faculty often overlook course organization and preparation in deference to classroom performance.
How they prepare and organize their courses should drive what they actually do in the classroom, and thus what students learn. Ideally, courses are organized around what faculty wish their students to learn. Once this issue has been addressed, teachers must entertain three other important questions to evaluate course preparation and organization:. Are these outcomes appropriate to the level and content of the course?.
How do I connect these outcomes with specific course activities?. Will these outcomes stimulate intellectual growth and enjoyment of learning? Answers to these questions should appear in the class syllabus and unambiguously convey to students: student learning outcomes, the nature of the subject matter, the teacher’s orientation to learning (e.g., lecture versus a greater emphasis on student involvement), the kinds of classroom learning activities practiced, how students will be engaged, the approach to assessing student learning, and classroom management practices.
Classroom Performance Being able to communicate psychological knowledge clearly and enthusiastically is one key to effective student learning, and therein rests a secret to becoming a truly great teacher. Becoming a successful teacher hinges on teachers’ abilities to establish rapport, an interpersonal dynamic that increases the likelihood that students will pay attention to and understand the teacher’s message. Essential aspects of building rapport include, among other things, learning students’ names, using relevant examples, treating students respectfully, using appropriate humor, and starting and ending class on time (Buskist & Saville, 2004). Clearly, the quality of faculty teaching transcends their disciplinary knowledge — it includes their personal characteristics as well. Approachability and Availability Faculty demeanor in the classroom influences their students’ willingness to initiate one-on-one contact with them outside of class. If students perceive faculty to be supportive and caring, they are likely to perceive them as being approachable outside the classroom. Questions to ask to assess approachability and availability include:.
What is my interactive style with students?. Do I encourage students to meet with me?. Am I in my office during my office hours?. Do I pay attention to my students when they are talking to me?.
Do I respond promptly and courteously to student phone calls and e-mail? Assessment of Student Learning Perhaps the most overlooked factor in the evaluation of teaching is how faculty assess students’ learning. This oversight is perplexing because the ultimate goal of teaching is, of course, to facilitate student learning. Teachers need a logical rationale for (a) assessing how well they are accomplishing this goal, and (b) contemplating possible answers to several questions helpful in their teaching:.
What is the relation of my assessment protocol to my student learning outcomes?. How frequently do I assess student learning and why?. What formats do I use to assess student learning and why?. How promptly do I return graded materials?. How much feedback do I provide students regarding their learning?. What procedures do I use for remediation of poor student performance?.
Are my assessment and grading procedures fair? Teachers’ approaches to assessment of student learning ideally should reflect their commitment to helping students become more effective learners. Sometimes, however, the nature of exams and other graded assignments reflect teachers’ needs.
The less time faculty spend grading and providing feedback, the more time they have for other responsibilities and interests. In the latter case, however, students might learn less than they might otherwise. Moreover, this approach may impede student learning by offering only limited feedback on their performance.
Choices in Assessment of Teaching A teacher’s preparation and organization, classroom performance, approachability and availability, and assessment of students’ learning are all fair game for evaluation. The question, of course, is how to go about the assessment process.
Who Provides Evaluative Data? Students are the most common source of evaluative information. When most faculty think “teaching evaluation,” they imagine their students completing a survey at the end of the semester. Although the validity of data from student evaluations has been questioned (e.g., Greimel-Fuhrmann & Geyer, 2003), they remain a primary source assessment tool. Nonetheless, additional forms of assessment, such as selfassessment and peer review, provide useful supplemental information that is not available from student evaluations such as feedback regarding developing appropriate student learning outcomes, developing and revising syllabi, understanding the relationship of student learning outcomes to student learning, and creating effective formats for assessing student learning. When Should the Evaluation be Conducted?
Evaluations are most commonly given at the end of the semester providing a snapshot of teaching over the entire course. The disadvantage to this approach is that it provides no opportunity for a teacher to address problems that may exist in the class, and so students’ learning and enjoyment of the course may suffer. The alternative is to evaluate one’s teaching earlier in the semester. That way, the end-of-the-semester evaluation can be used, in part, to gauge how successfully a teacher has resolved previously identified problems.
Students frequently voice their appreciation of a teacher’s willingness to incorporate their suggestions into improving their classroom learning experience. Some faculty may wish to evaluate their teaching more than once or twice a semester, even weekly, but students may find such frequent assessment obsessive and annoying. Instead, faculty may wish to solicit feedback from students when trying a new technique or demonstration for the first time or when making other modifications to teaching. Two or three evaluations per semester will likely provide ample data for assessing your teaching effectiveness. Although most institutions typically have a required instrument for end-of-the-semester evaluations, developing one’s own questions for an earlier evaluation allows a faculty to tap student perceptions that the required instrument might overlook.
Such “home grown” evaluations also allow questions that faculty deem especially critical to understanding their approach to teaching. For example, if teachers incorporate specific types of learning activities not reflected on the institutional instrument, they may wish to develop a few questions to address their effectiveness. What Assessment Techniques Might be Used? Student feedback, self-assessment, and peer evaluation may be used alone or in combination.
Data can be collected several ways ranging from the typical paper and pencil course evaluations containing forced-choice and open-ended items to in-class learning assessment techniques (e.g., the muddiest point, in which students express to their teacher, in writing, the point or points that they had the most difficulty understanding during lecture — see Angelo & Cross, 1993), and student focus groups. Paper and pencil evaluations provide global information regarding overall teaching effectiveness and typically center on teacher qualities. In-class learning assessment focuses on what students learn during any given class period.
Lastly, randomly selected students may be brought together outside of class to meet in focus groups to provide feedback on specific aspects of a course — clarity of lectures, testing and grading procedures, and so on. Focus groups also are useful in providing feedback regarding a teacher’s rapport with students and building stronger rapport. Self-assessment techniques provide valuable data regarding all aspects of one’s teaching, and like student evaluations, exist in several formats including informal reflection after class, course portfolios, videotape analysis, teaching journals, review and revision of a teaching philosophy statement, and comparisons of student learning outcomes to actual student achievement. Informal reflection involves assessing how well faculty perform on any given day. One useful metric for these judgments is the extent to which students appear attentive and engaged in class discussion. “Great” days, of course, are those in which students generate many questions, comments, and insightful remarks.
Daunting as it may seem, watching oneself on videotape captures how one’s teaching personality, mannerisms, and communication skills appear to students. This process is extremely beneficial in identifying problems and strengths in classroom delivery. Writing about one’s approach to teaching as well as actual teaching experiences creates opportunities for reflection — the chance to lead an “examined life” as a teacher. Contemplating both what one does well and poorly as a teacher may provide insights into strategies and actions to undertake to become better. Finally, determining how well students achieve course objectives permits a teacher to identify ways to help students achieve these goals in the future. It also provides a means of assessing how well course preparation and organization help students achieve these outcomes. Peer evaluations most often take the form of a departmental colleague visiting a class and providing feedback.
However, peers may also analyze video of colleagues’ teaching, review syllabi (e.g., learning outcomes, content, and grading procedures), and review their philosophy of teaching statement and teaching portfolio. Most faculty members’ departmental peers have not been trained in formal analysis of teaching strategies and style, so they may not provide concrete suggestions for teaching improvement. However, departmental peers do know psychology and often provide helpful suggestions regarding course content, demonstrations and examples of specific topics and issues, and the relationship between student learning objectives and content. Peers also know the student population and can offer insights on how best “to reach” specific segments of that population. Keep in mind that because faculty have on-going social relationships with their colleagues, they may be reticent to share their true feelings. In other words, it may difficult to find a peer willing to provide completely honest feedback on one’s teaching.
Using Evaluative Data to Improve Teaching Some general guidelines provide a comprehensive approach to evaluating and improving teaching. Global feedback such as “You’re a really good teacher” or “You need to be more approachable” is not helpful in identifying ways to improve teaching. Seek feedback that emphasizes specific behaviors to change or to be adopted. For example, “You did a great job getting our term papers back to us two days after we turned them in” or “I sent you an e-mail three days ago and you still haven’t answered it” identify precise behavior a teacher may need to change or maintain. More Feedback is Better Than Less The more feedback teachers gather, the more information they will have with which to assess their teaching effectiveness.
Although the numerical information from objective portions of student evaluations may provide the overall impression that students have of one’s teaching, faculty should gather as much specific written commentary from students and peers as they can. This information is useful in interpreting the numerical data and is more likely to pinpoint specific aspects of teaching that are meritorious or need improvement. T ake Context Into Consideration As faculty examine their teaching strengths and weaknesses, they should consider context as a potential factor influencing their teaching and students’ motivation to learn. Sometimes students’ willingness to study for classes succumbs to their extracurricular interests. If so, a teacher’s task is to inspire students to adopt more effective study habits. At other times, teaching may not be appropriate for the course level, especially for new faculty who, coming right from graduate school or a post-doctoral experience, demand that undergraduates read nearly as much as they did.
In addition, some courses faculty teach may be prerequisites for other courses in the curriculum. Colleagues who teach these other courses expect students to have particular knowledge and skills when the prerequisite course is completed.
Seek Consistent Themes Within and Across Evaluative Measures Examine evaluative information as a gestalt and look for patterns. Skillful teachers reflect on both critical and positive themes, and link valid criticisms — those comments that identify teaching deficits — to specific teaching behaviors they can adjust to improve teaching effectiveness. They do not focus on criticism to the extent that they overlook what is positive about their teaching. Experienced teachers know that the key to teaching enhancement is to refine what they do well while simultaneously improving what they do less than well. Ignore the Lone Voice of Gloom No matter how good student teaching evaluations may be, they are rarely perfect. Most faculty have at least one student with whom they do not connect despite their best efforts. Sometimes they do not know that this student exists until they receive their teaching evaluations and read a comment such as: “You are the single worst teacher I have ever had.
I should get my tuition back for this class.” For most faculty, this comment is the one that they will remember best, even when the bulk of the other commentary is glowing. Ignore student commentary that is mean spirited or harshly critical, or offered without any evidence to substantiate it, especially when it is provided by a single student. This advice also applies to extremely positive commentary. Use Multiple Measures Do not limit evaluation to a single source (e.g., students) or a specific teaching dimension (e.g., classroom performance).
Faculty have the best chances of learning about their teaching and improving it if they gather evaluative information from both students and peers on all aspects of their teaching. Develop an Individualized Assessment Plan for Each of Your Courses Adopt a reflective approach to the evaluation of teaching.
As teachers prepare syllabi for next semester, they need to consider how they will assess their teaching in each of your classes. Faculty may wish to incorporate evaluative plans involving their students into their syllabi. Those who do so often contact colleagues prior to each semester, whom they wish to visit their classes or review their syllabi and presentation materials. Such advance planning allows teachers to design assessment strategies tailored to providing specific information about their teaching strengths and weaknesses.
Conclusion Teaching is a dynamic blend of performance art and science that is influenced in no small measure by the teacher’s personality, the students’ motivation, and institutional vagaries. Becoming a better teacher requires understanding how these factors interact and change over time—and such comprehension seems most likely to be prompted by intentional and reflective evaluation and analysis. WILLIAM BUSKIST is alumni professor and distinguished professor in the Teaching of Psychology at Auburn University.
His research interests center on the qualities and behaviors of master teachers, development of student-teacher rapport, and assessment of effective teaching and student learning. JARED KEELEY is a second year graduate student in the clinical psychology program at Auburn University. He is the past Chair of the Graduate Student Teaching Association of the Society for the Teaching of Psychology.
JESSICA IRONS is second year doctoral student in the experimental psychology program at Auburn University. She earned her bachelor’s and master’s degrees at Augusta State University. Evaluating and Improving Your Teaching. About the Author WILLIAM BUSKIST is alumni professor and distinguished professor in the Teaching of Psychology at Auburn University. His research interests center on the qualities and behaviors of master teachers, development of student-teacher rapport, and assessment of effective teaching and student learning. JARED KEELEY is a second year graduate student in the clinical psychology program at Auburn University. He is the past Chair of the Graduate Student Teaching Association of the Society for the Teaching of Psychology.
JESSICA IRONS is second year doctoral student in the experimental psychology program at Auburn University. She earned her bachelor's and master's degrees at Augusta State University.
It is important to evaluate learning activities for the following reasons:. To see what is working and what needs removing or changing. To assess how the activities are being delivered and how they could be improved. To see how the activities are being received by the participants Evaluating is a great way to really get the raw facts of whether something is succeeding or may need changing. Therefore if you spend time going through the learning activities and seeing how students have responded to a certain task or question, it can really help re-shape it for future classes. If students whizzed through the activity and then looked rather bored then it would be obvious that the task was a bit too easy and not really suitable or beneficial for that group.
Therefore you would need to try and make it more engaging and stimulating, perhaps by making it more difficult or time-consuming so the students really have to work to complete it. If the activities are taking longer than expected and you can see that the participants are really struggling with the concept, or with trying to come up with the solution, things again would need to be addressed. Without evaluation the learning activities would be rather rigid and any flaws would never be truly addressed - this could be very detrimental to the whole process. Therefore evaluating the activities and improving based on your findings will help the program and students move forward and have the best possible learning experience. You might also like.
History Events Learning history is very important because it helps us learn about what worked well and what did not. Literature & Language First of all it opens up a whole new world and new culture to you, and you can travel to the country. Driving Lessons Driving is one thing, which is very difficult to learn but once you learn it and master it, you will. Literature & Language English is the language of the world and it is also widely used language on the internet. Almost every. Science Because science is involved with everything except for grammar.
Science is what explains everything that. Advertising & Marketing It is essential to maintain a calm and collected manner at all times when managing an office facility. Computers Learning basic skills would be good just because the world today is just getting overwhelmed with computers.
Religion It is important in today's world to learn of others beliefs so you may learn how to DO YOUR OWN HOMEWORK. Education Because you can have a clear aim and step during learning activities, then you will work harder and more. Teaching Out of the greater part of alternate languages, why is it essential to contemplate Spanish?